August 30, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Scenes from the Sitka Kitch’s fourth Preserving the Harvest class — Simple Chutneys and Salsas

Students learned how to make pa variety of chutneys and salsas during the fourth Preserving the Harvest series class of the summer on Monday, Aug. 29, at the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen.

The chutneys and salsas class was taught by Lisa Sadleir-Hart, with assistance from Betsy Decker. It is one of six classes in the Preserving the Harvest class series, which will teach people how to safely preserve the summer’s bounty so it can be eaten in the summer.

Other classes in the series will include simple pickles and sauerkraut, low-sugar jams and jellies, canning salmon, chutneys and salsas, apple and fruit butters, and a community kale celebration. More details can be found at this link.

The Sitka Kitch was a project of the 2013 Sitka Health Summit, and the project is coordinated by the Sitka Conservation Society in partnership with the Sitka Local Foods Network. The Sitka Kitch can be rented to teach cooking and food preservation classes, by local cottage food industry entrepreneurs who need a commercial kitchen to make their products, and for large groups needing a large kitchen for a community dinner. To learn more about how to rent the Sitka Kitch, please go to the website at http://www.sitkawild.org/sitka_kitch.

The next class in the series will be apple and fruit butters, from 6-8:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 12, at the Sitka Kitch. To register for classes, go to our online registration page at http://sitkakitch.eventsmart.com/ and click on the class name.

We now have a PayPal option so people can pay the registration fees before the class. There are food/supply fees for most of the classes, which are split between the students, and those are paid by cash or check (made out to the Sitka Conservation Society) at the class. Other than for the Kale Celebration event, each class has a limited number of spots available, so register early. Registration for each class closes at 11:55 p.m. on the Friday before the class.

If you have any questions about the class series, please email sitkakitch@sitkawild.org. A slideshow of images from the chutneys and salsas class is posted below.

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August 27, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Patagonia headquarters chef Tracy On in Sitka to develop new Fish to Schools program recipes

TracyOnWithSalmonFriedRiceSalmonMacAndCheese

Tracy On shows off a serving of chum salmon fried rice (front) and pink salmon macaroni and cheese that she tested Friday (Aug. 26) at the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen. Tracy is in town for a two-week internship with the Sitka Conservation Society to develop new recipes for the Fish to Schools program.

In her regular job, Tracy On is the chef at Patagonia headquarters in Ventura, Calif., serving about 500 breakfasts and lunches a day to Patagonia employees. For her summer vacation, Tracy is in Sitka developing new recipes for the Fish to Schools program as part of a two-week internship with the Sitka Conservation Society.

“I’m working on recipes for Fish to Schools, so we can incorporate a little more local salmon in the school lunches,” Tracy said. “I also had personal reasons for coming here. I wanted to learn more about the fishing industry and how to connect the kids to their local food sources. I’m also a little selfish. I’ve always wanted to come to Alaska and this is my first trip.”

During her first week in Sitka, Tracy spent several days at the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen testing new recipes. She also did a morning interview with KCAW-Raven Radio on Wednesday to help spread the word about her visit. On Friday, Tracy prepared a chum salmon fried rice dish and a pink salmon macaroni and cheese dish, then took a tour of the newly renovated Sitka Salmon Shares plant. She also has been working on a salmon corn dog and other recipes.

Tracy is trying to create recipes the kids will enjoy, what she called “comfort classics kids love,” while also keeping costs down because most school districts don’t receive more than $2 or $3 per student meal for their school lunch programs. That’s one reason she has been working with pink and chum salmon while in Sitka, because the costs are lower. She also is testing recipes that can be cooked from scratch, as well as ones that just require reheating, since school districts use different methods to prepare their meals. The Sitka Conservation Society will host an invitation-only tasting this week where SCS members and guests can try out a few of the new meals.

“The main reason to host Tracy is to bring the Fish to Schools program to the next step,” said Sophie Nethercut, who coordinates the program for the Sitka Conservation Society. “We’ve been running this program on donations, and with the funding climate the way it is, we wanted to create a line of minimally processed recipes using pink and chum salmon that can be marketed to schools, nursing homes and hospitals.”

Tracy isn’t the first intern the Sitka Conservation Society has hosted from Patagonia, which has been sending employees to Sitka for the past three years to work on a variety of projects. Other Patagonia interns held workshops on repairing outdoor gear or helped with computer systems while in Sitka.

Tracy will be in town one more week, which will include a couple of sessions working on new recipes at the Sitka Kitch and the tasting event. She also hopes to get out on a commercial fishing boat and possibly visit other seafood processors in town.

Also, local commercial fishermen can still donate coho salmon to the Fish to Schools program, as the annual donation drive has been extended until Aug. 30.

August 7, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Sitka Salmon Shares brings Southeast Alaska fish to Midwest markets

MarshSkeeleHoldsSalmonAsGuyFilletsBehind

Sitka Salmon Shares vice president-fisherman Marsh Skeele holds up a chinook salmon during a recent tour of the company’s new plant on Smith Street in Sitka.

Sitka Salmon Shares founder-president Nicolaas Mink holds a copy of his book “Salmon: A Global History” during a 2014 visit to Sitka.

What started out as a one-off fundraiser for a Sitka nonprofit has grown into a thriving business with sales approaching $4 million, with 2,500 members and 100 wholesale accounts spread out over six states.

Sitka Salmon Shares is a community-supported fishery (CSF) program, where members buy shares in the harvest similar to the process of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. But instead of the members being local to Sitka, where most of the fish is caught, the members of Sitka Salmon Shares live in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa.

“Each member gets a five-pound box of fish delivered to their door nine months of the year,” said Marsh Skeele, who serves as Sitka Salmon Shares vice president/co-founder and one of its 13 fishermen-owners. “A lot of them are former Alaskans or from Seattle, so they know good fish. The fish in the grocery stores there tends to have poor quality.”

The company distributes four types of salmon (chinook, coho, sockeye and chum), rockfish, ling cod, halibut, spot prawns, Pacific cod and blackcod, with most of the fish caught out of Sitka or Juneau. Sitka Salmon Shares also sells fish at 23 different farmers markets around the Midwest. Last year, Sitka Salmon Shares bought the former Big Blue Fisheries plant in Sitka, and is renovating it so the company can keep up with the special processing and freezing needs of its growing customer base while also developing new value-added products such as smoked salmon to add to the mix.

Sitka Salmon Shares got its start in 2011, when founder-president Nicolaas “Nic” Mink was in Sitka with a couple of his Knox College students working on a sustainable fishing and food-sourcing project with the Sitka Conservation Society. Mink, who still teaches environmental science part-time at Knox (he had a brief stint at Butler University a couple of years ago), decided to take some fish back with him to Galesburg, Ill., which he personally delivered to customers. Then those customers asked for more fish, and Sitka Salmon Shares was born.

“I think that first load of 750 pounds of fish raised about $10,000,” Mink said. “This year, our sixth, we sold more than 100,000 pounds of fish, just under $4 million.”

Some people laughed at his business plan when Mink decided to sell fish more than 2,000 miles away from its source, with a headquarters in a landlocked Midwest town away from most fish markets. But Mink and his partners found out that even people in the Midwest want high-quality fish from sustainable sources, fish that’s well-treated along the journey so it’s still in good shape when it reaches its customers.

“They want to be fish-eaters, but they don’t know how,” Mink said. “Sitka Salmon Shares gives them steps to know how, and it gave us a lot of opportunities to sell fish. Midwesterners are used to eating farmed salmon, but they heard about wild salmon. They want to eat wild, because it’s more resilient and sustainable than farmed.”

Education is a big part of the Sitka Salmon Shares story. In addition to providing the monthly boxes of fish, there is a newsletter with information about the fishermen-owners, where and how the fish is caught, and a variety of recipes geared toward wild fish and not farmed. The recipes come from four sources — Sitka Salmon Shares members, our chefs, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) Cook It Frozen site and from online sources.

“If you take a piece of coho (aka, silver salmon) and cook it as long as a piece of farmed salmon, the flesh becomes mealy and doesn’t taste good,” Mink said. “There’s a lot of education. With farmed salmon, the flesh is soft and thicker than wild salmon, so people need to cook it twice as long as wild salmon. We know wild salmon doesn’t need a lot of time on the grill, and that’s been one of the biggest hurdles.”

“We provide a lot of information,” Skeele said. “They definitely want to know more when you provide them with quality fish. We teach them about pressure bleeding, flash freezing, accountability and traceability. They want to know as much information as we can tell them about the fish that comes through our plant.”

The owner-fishermen are longliners and trollers, for the most part, with some who gillnet sockeye and use pots to catch the spot prawns. Skeele said all of the fishermen are owners in the company, “so they have some skin in the game.” By having skin in the game, the fishermen are more likely to treat the fish better once it comes onto the boat, so it maintains its high quality.

Right now, Sitka Salmon Shares doesn’t sell a lot of its fish in Sitka, although it does sell fish to a couple of local restaurants such as the Westmark Hotel, Totem Square Inn and Sitka Hotel. Sitka Salmon Shares doesn’t want to compete locally with the Alaskans Own Seafood CSF program that sells to members in Alaska. But now that Sitka Salmon Shares has its own plant, it does offer local processing of fish to charter fishing operations, personal-use and sport fishermen from Sitka, and to commercial fishermen who sell their own fish to various markets around the country.

“We’d like to sell more locally, and it would be great to have our fish in Sea Mart,” Mink said. “We’re excited about our community processing program, and we’re trying to do more processing for Sitka fishermen.”

In recent years, Sitka Salmon Shares has received national exposure with articles in Food & Wine, New Food Economy, Entrepreneur and Forbes, plus a variety of regional publications and Sitka exposure with a story on KCAW-Raven Radio. Mink said there is still more Sitka Salmon Shares can do in the Midwest and Alaska.

“With our plant, we have our own ice and our own value-added room,” Mink said. “We have a talented individual, Pat Glabb, rebuilding Big Blue. He built Silver Bay Seafoods plant. Right now we’re focused on the Midwest, and we have a ways to go to develop our markets there. But we have assets on the ground and systems in place and tons of room to grow. We think there are a lot of cool things to do with value-added. For example, we have Chris Eley, a chef-butcher from the Smoking Goose Meatery in Indianapolis, developing some salmon sausages for us.”

Fishermen wanting to learn more about the Sitka Salmon Shares community processing program can call Jason Croft at 966-9999, or stop by the plant on Smith Street (across from Baranof Island Brewing Company). You also can visit the Sitka Salmon Shares website at http://www.sitkasalmonshares.com/.

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August 1, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Check out the August 2016 edition of the Sitka Local Foods Network newsletter

The Sitka Local Foods Network just sent out the August 2016 edition of its newly launched monthly newsletter. Feel free to click this link to get a copy.

This edition of the newsletter has brief stories about the Sitka Farmers Markets, a series of ‘Building A Local Food System’ articles by intern Claire Chang, a reminder that you can still add Pick.Click.Give. donations to your Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend application through Aug. 31, and an update on the Sitka Local Foods Network board of directors. Each story has links to our website for more information.

You can sign up for future editions of our newsletter by clicking on the registration form image in the right column of our website and filling in the information. If you received a copy but didn’t want one, there is a link at the bottom of the newsletter so you can unsubscribe. Our intention is to get the word out about upcoming events and not to spam people. We will protect your privacy by not sharing our email list with others.

July 28, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Sitka chef Colette Nelson to represent Alaska in Great American Seafood Cook-Off

Ludvig’s Bistro owner and executive chef Colette Nelson garnishes rabbit thighs with beach asparagus for a special local foods dinner she prepared as a February 2015 fundraiser for The Sawmill Farm.

Next week, Sitka chef Colette Nelson will carry a special cargo in a violin case when she heads to New Orleans to represent Alaska in the Great American Seafood Cook-Off.

Nelson, the owner and executive chef of Ludvig’s Bistro, will be carrying a frozen white king salmon in her violin case, the fish she plans to cook for the annual contest. The white king salmon was caught July 4 by troller Lou Barr of Auke Bay (who Nelson used to commercial fish with) and flash-frozen earlier this month. Nelson doesn’t plan to let the fish out of her control as she travels to New Orleans.

“I’m going to hold that fish with me. I’m not going to let somebody put it under the plane because that’s our gold,” Nelson told the Juneau Empire in a July 25 article.

On Aug. 6, Nelson will compete against chefs from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. The Great American Seafood Cook-Off is sponsored by the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, and focuses on domestic, sustainable seafood and local ingredients.

Nelson, who will compete with her sous chef Josh Miller, hopes to become the second straight Alaska chef to win the Best Seafood Chef title, joining Beau Schooler and Travis Hotch of The Rookery Café in Juneau who won last year with a sockeye salmon dish. Nelson was nominated for this year’s contest by Gov. Bill Walker.

Nelson hasn’t said exactly how she plans to cook her white king salmon, but did hint that it will have a Spanish theme in keeping with her restaurant’s use of Mediterranean flavors.

“For me this experience is not only about representing Alaska, but it’s about what Alaska has given to me,” Nelson told the Empire. “I came here to fish in college so that I could study abroad in Spain. I did that and had a great time fishing. I fished for three seasons, then went to Spain and fell in love with the cuisine and with Mediterranean food as a whole. So to go to this competition 25 years later — after being in both the seafood industry and the restaurant business — it feels complete to go there with Spanish ideas.”

The dish will feature a pan-seared fillet of the fish that includes the belly meat.

“For anybody that knows king salmon, the belly meat is where the best flavor is,” Nelson said. “We like it just perfectly cooked so it just starts to separate, when the flakes come off. You can feel the oil, get it on your lips and really taste it.”

Nelson opened Ludvig’s Bistro in 2002, and has been a big supporter of local foods in Sitka (including using her restaurant to host fundraisers for the Sitka Local Foods Network and developing recipes and lesson plans for Sitka’s Fish To Schools lunch program coordinated by the Sitka Conservation Society). She grew up in Oregon and attended the University of Washington, where she trained under Seattle restauranteur Susan Kaufman, who also had a food cart and restaurants in Juneau. She moved to Alaska in 1998, working as chef for Kingfisher Charters & Lodge in Sitka before opening her restaurant.

During the competition, Nelson and sous chef Josh Miller will have an hour to prepare six plates for the judges and one for photos. Nelson and Miller have been practicing, and now feel they’re ready.

“We do this all the time. We cook under pressure,” Nelson said. “When we were practicing (Sunday) I said, ‘Look, we’re just having a dinner party for seven guests and let’s just make it in an hour. We got this.’”

July 22, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Sitka Spruce Tips 4H club to host 4H Fair at July 30 Sitka Farmers Market

The Sitka Spruce Tips 4H club will host its inaugural 4H Fair at the Sitka Farmers Market from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall (235 Katlian Street).

The Sitka Spruce Tips 4H club is co-sponsored by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service and the Sitka Conservation Society. It provides a variety of programming promoting the Alaska Way of Life for youth and their families.

According to event organizer Jasmine Shaw of the UAF Cooperative Extension Service Sitka District Office, the 4H members are going to be submitting projects in six different divisions:

Division 1 — Food Preservation (jams, jellies, preserves, canned goods, smoked fish, jerky)
Division 2 — Baked Goods (pies, cakes, cookies, donuts/frybread, breads)
Division 3 — Produce (fruits and vegetables) and Flowers
Division 4 — Arts and Crafts (knitting, basketry, natural products, recycled crafts, woodworking, sewing)
Division 5 — Art (photography, drawings, paintings)
Division 6 — Presentations (posters, reports, displays)

Only one entry per individual per category is allowed, so we are asking members to choose your best item. Other items can be displayed but not entered for judging.

“This is a chance for community members to see what 4H has been up to all year and become involved if they want,” Shaw said. “(We will have registration forms).

“Some members will have items for sale alongside the fair display,” Shaw added. “I’m not sure all of what will be for sale yet, but I do some of our members in our natural product series will be making lotion and lip balm.”

July 20, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Scenes from the Sitka Kitch’s first Preserving the Harvest class — Simple Pickles and Sauerkraut

Students learned how to make pickles from squash and small-batch sauerkraut at the first Preserving the Harvest series class of the summer on Monday, July 18, at the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen.

The Simple Pickles and Sauerkraut class was taught by Lisa Sadleir-Hart, with assistance from Jasmine Shaw. It is one of six classes in the Preserving the Harvest class series, which will teach people how to safely preserve the summer’s bounty so it can be eaten in the summer.

Other classes in the series will include low-sugar jams and jellies, canning salmon, chutneys and salsas, apple and fruit butters, and a community kale celebration. More details can be found at this link.

To register for classes, go to our online registration page at http://sitkakitch.eventsmart.com/ and click on the class name. We now have a PayPal option so people can pay the registration fees before the class. There are food/supply fees for most of the classes, which are split between the students, and those are paid by cash or check (made out to the Sitka Conservation Society) at the class. Other than for the Kale Celebration event, each class has a limited number of spots available, so register early. Registration for each class closes at 11:55 p.m. on the Friday before the class.

If you have any questions about the class series, please email sitkakitch@sitkawild.org. A slideshow of images from the simple pickles and sauerkraut class is posted below.

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July 18, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Alaska Native Sisterhood Culinary Academy graduates first class of students

The first graduating class of the ANS Culinary Academy. Back row: Paulette Moreno, Jenna Martin, Dorothy Gordon, Jessie Natkong, Joy Wood, Marie Lawson, Amy Sutton, Teresa Moses. Front row: Jaiden Martin, Duane Lindoff, Mykle Potter, Zackery Loewen, Chad Titell, Andrew Roberts, Russell James (with Camden). Floor level: Lydia May, Gary May. Not pictured: Adam Geiger, David Thomas, Sarah Smith.

Seventeen students of the new Alaska Native Sisterhood Culinary Academy graduated from the program on Saturday, July 16, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Founders Hall.

The graduates learned basic culinary skills, and also earned SafeServ and Certified Food Protection Manager (CFPM) certifications. The instructor was Gary May, the owner of New Creations Mobile Bistro and one of a handful of chefs in Alaska qualified to teach CFPM classes. The Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS) Camp 4 in Sitka, the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) Camp 1 in Sitka, and Faith Mountain Ministries sponsored the classes.

“The vision of the ANS is to have a commercial kitchen at ANB Founders Hall to be here for our people, for koo.éex’ or holiday dinners,” ANS Camp 4 President Paulette Moreno said. “We also want it to be a place of training. The vision of our elders is to get our people in jobs where they can earn an income all year. We also have traditional foods we need people to know how to safely handle.”

Paulette said the ANS already has a waiting list for the next series of classes, which will probably take place this fall. Gary said the training was about 20 hours, and the students had to pass a couple of tests to earn their certifications, which will allow them to get jobs in just about any kitchen in the state..

The graduates were Paulette Moreno, Jenna Martin, Dorothy Gordon, Jessie Natkong, Joy Wood, Marie Lawson, Amy Sutton, Teresa Moses, Duane Lindoff, Mykle Potter, Zackery Loewen, Chad Titell, Andrew Roberts, and Russell James (Teresa’s and Russell’s month-old baby, Camden, received a special certificate for attending all of the classes with his parents). Adam Geiger, David Thomas, and Sarah Smith also graduated from the class but weren’t able to attend the ceremony.

A slideshow of scenes from the graduation ceremony is posted below.

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July 16, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Sitka Kitch to offer Preserving the Harvest class series this summer

You grew it, harvested it and/or caught it, so now what do you do? The Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen will be offering the Preserving the Harvest class series to teach Sitkans how to store the summer’s bounty so they can use it during the winter.

This class series features six classes covering a variety of food preservation methods. Students will learn how to safely preserve their food, so it won’t spoil or cause illness. The classes on schedule are:

Simple Pickles and Sauerkraut — 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, July 18, taught by Lisa Sadleir-Hart and assisted by Jasmine Shaw, $20, plus food/supply fee
Low-Sugar Jams and Jellies — 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 1, taught by Jasmine Shaw and assisted by Callie Simmons, $27.50, plus food/supply fee
Canning Salmon — 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 22, taught by Ellen Ruhle and assisted by Jasmine Shaw, $27.50, plus food/supply fee
Chutneys and Salsas — 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 29, taught by Lisa Sadleir-Hart and assisted by Betsy Decker, $27.50, plus food/supply fee
Apple and Fruit Butters — 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, Sept. 12, taught by Lisa Sadleir-Hart and assisted by Betsy Decker, $27.50, plus food/supply fee
Community Kale Celebration — 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, Sept. 26, Cooking demonstrations featuring kale recipes by chefs Kathy Jones and Barbara Palacios (not a class), entrance fee $10.

If you have any questions about the class series, please email sitkakitch@sitkawild.org.

June 22, 2016 by Charles Bingham

Sitka Kitch to offer Preserving the Harvest: Pickles and Sauerkraut class

Want to learn how to make a simple pickle using a vinegar brine? What about the art of fermentation, and making homemade sauerkraut filled with probiotics to go with reindeer dogs and sausages?

Lisa Sadleir-Hart, RDN, MPH will teach Simple Pickles and Sauerkraut at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 18, at the Sitka Kitch community rental commercial kitchen, located at First Presbyterian Church (505 Sawmill Creek Road). This is part of a new Preserving the Harvest series of classes that will be held throughout the summer. The other classes in the series will be announced once details are finalized.

The class cost is $20, plus a food and supply fee that will be divided among the number of registered students. Registration is capped at 10 students, so sign up early to secure your space in this first food preservation class of the season. Registration closes at 10:55 p.m. on Friday, July 15.

You will use our online registration site, http://sitkakitch.eventsmart.com/, to sign up for the class, but you’ll pay by cash or check (made out to Sitka Conservation Society) at the beginning of the class. To avoid a no-show fee, we ask for 48-hour notice if you can’t attend the class.

If you have any questions, please email sitkakitch@sitkawild.org.